Programming Language Demand Index

JVM language powering Apache Spark and Kafka Streams

The dominant language for data engineering, machine learning and scripting

The universal language of data — querying, transforming and analysing structured data

High-performance backend services, CLIs and infrastructure tooling

Enterprise backend and data platform language — Spark, Kafka and Flink run on the JVM

Modern JVM language used in Android and backend services

Typed superset of JavaScript used across the full stack

Memory-safe systems programming — increasingly used in data tools like Polars and Delta-rs

The language of the web — frontend, backend and tooling

Statistical computing and data visualisation — dominant in academia and research

.NET ecosystem for enterprise backends and cloud services

High-performance systems code — ML inference engines and embedded systems

Expressive backend language — Ruby on Rails and data scripting

Shell scripting for automation, CI/CD pipelines and data workflows

Apple platform development — iOS, macOS and server-side Swift

Server-side web development — powers a large share of the web